Ask For Whatever You Wish . . . (Part 1)

A couple weeks ago I was out to dinner with some friends and the question was brought up, “Is it okay to pray for certain things?” When we expanded that question a little further we were essentially asking, is it wrong to pray for the things that you desire?  My immediate gut answer was….of course not!  Immediately I think of things like praying for someone’s health, or praying for a child’s upbringing, or asking God for world peace (I just had to throw in my standard pageant answer).  Prayer is communicating with God and regardless of whether I say it out loud or not, He knows the desires of my heart.  I’m fooling no one if I don’t mention it so why not put it up in prayer? Sounds easy enough.  My friend also added that it’s not only asking God for what you want,  but what you do with the response.  Are you willing to accept God’s answer if the answer is not in line with your own will?

After that conversation, I kept thinking about our answers.  Was it really as easy and simple as I made it out to be?  Even in our conversation we were coming up with gaping holes and couldn’t quite answer the gray areas (i.e. when our intentions may not be as pure, or as black and white as healing the sick).

Since that conversation I’ve been doing some reading and some listening….particularly to Keller, Piper, and MacDonald.  The bulk of the sermons brought it back to the basics, in particular the Lord’s prayer, and in digging a little further, analyzing the verse “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Although on the surface the verse talks about a basic necessity, it’s the basis for a broader request asking God to fulfill the natural/carnal desires of our body and heart.

So after listening and reading, the one glaring conclusion I came to was this: my focus on the question itself was inherently flawed.  If in prayer I’m asking God what He can do for me, without taking a whole host of other things into consideration, I’m not praying as I should be.

As you can see from the title this is a two-part post, all I’ve done here is laid the framework for a question that’s been on my mind.  This would be way too long if I started to delve into the answers I sought out, but I will at a later time.  Certainly to be continued . . .

 In the meantime, what do you think?